Spurs take second swat at new-look Hornets

NEW ORLEANS — Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has known Dell Demps for 15 years, and Monty Williams for about as long. To him, it’s no secret why the two San Antonio expatriates have teamed up to turn basketball around in the Big Easy.

They’re both people people.

“Both of them really had a way with players and people,” Popovich said of Demps and Williams, in their first season as New Orleans’ general manager and head coach, respectively. “They got along with front-office staff, with players, with the janitors, with the people who sell the popcorn and the beer.”

So far in their inaugural season with the Hornets, Demps and Williams have gone a long way toward winning over the guys who sling snacks and suds at New Orleans Arena — not to mention the guy who plays point guard there.

After a tumultuous 37-45 campaign in 2009-10 that saw the Hornets miss the playoffs for the first time in three?? seasons, coach Byron Scott and GM Jeff Bower sacked and a summer of All-Star point guard Chris Paul asking for a trade without asking for a trade, the Hornets are 12-3 and the talk of the NBA.

“We kind of forgot about them last year because of the injuries, and they were out of the playoffs,” Spurs guard Manu Ginobili said. “People started to ignore them. Big mistake.”

The Spurs, of all teams, will have difficulty ignoring New Orleans now.

Their 12-game winning streak stopped by Friday’s 103-94 loss to Dallas, the Spurs today face the proposition of trying to begin a new one against the only other team to have beaten them this season.

On their way to an 8-0 start that was the best in franchise history, the Hornets stunned the Spurs 99-90 on Oct. 30 at the AT&T Center. It would be 27 days until the Spurs lost again, but they still remember.

“We’re going to have to do a great job to get this loss back and get a win (in New Orleans),” Ginobili said after the Dallas game. “It will be a huge game for us.”

It is not surprising the Spurs (13-2) are the post-Thanksgiving leader in the Southwest Division. Shocking to most observers is the team one game behind, nipping at their heels.

Credit for the Hornets’ rapid rebound goes to Demps, who spent the previous five seasons as the Spurs’ vice president of basketball operations, and to Williams, who played 154 games with the Spurs from 1996-98 before taking a post as an intern on Popovich’s bench in 2003.

Demps has been the league’s most wheeling and dealing GM over the past few months, trading for Trevor Ariza, Marco Belinelli, Willie Green and Jason Smith over the offseason and, more recently acquiring Jarrett Jack and David Andersen and a heaping helping of salary cap relief from Toronto for Jerryd Bayless and Peja Stojakovic.

Williams, meanwhile, has been lauded for instilling a sense of defensive discipline responsible for transforming New Orleans into the NBA’s leader in scoring defense (91.13 ppg).

More importantly, the two appear to have won the confidence of Paul, the formerly disgruntled face of the franchise who is fully recovered from last season’s knee surgery and has returned to elite form.

“I think everybody knows Chris Paul is Chris Paul,” Spurs guard George Hill said. “He’s one of the best point guards in the league. We’re going to have our hands full.”

Thanks to the return of Paul and the arrival of new management from San Antonio, the Hornets look a lot less like the injury-ravaged mess that missed the playoffs last year and more like the bear of a team that took the Spurs to seven games in the 2008 Western Conference semifinals.

As if the Spurs needed a reminder of how far things have come in New Orleans, they will get one today.